1. Loudmax

Loudmax is a free limiter plugin intended to do just what its name suggests. If you want a simple limiter to boost the loudness of your project, this one is a great place to start. The first thing you will notice when you open it up is a very simple interface without many controls. Given its intended function, this is not really much of a downside, and it makes using the plugin a breeze. To increase the volume of your track, lower the threshold slider in Loudmax. This will lower the volume at which audio will be limited, allowing you to increase volume without encountering clipping. This plugin does a good job compared to other free limiters. Play with the sliders to make sure you don’t distort your audio too much or end up with an overly compressed song. If you compress or limit too much, you will be left without much dynamic range, which can make your mix sound flat.

If you need a solid free limiter or you just want to explore what a limiter can do, Loudmax is a great free option. It gives you everything you need for basic limiting and nothing more. It will not perform quite as well as some fancier paid plugins, but it is excellent for what it is. Its incredibly low CPU load is also a great bonus.

Voxengo’s SPAN plugin is a spectrum analyzer. Unlike a limiter, a spectrum analyzer plugin does not alter the sound of your song at all. Instead, it is meant to give you information about your mix or master. SPAN will provide you with a visual similar to what you would see in an equalizer plugin. But instead of a simplified frequency chart, this plugin will give you incredibly detailed information about the shape of your project. It will also allow you to adjust a wide variety of settings and parameters to zero in on the information you want. This plugin will take some time to learn, but if you want to get better at making purposeful decisions and learn to master your own music, the time investment will be worth it.

SPAN is worth downloading for anyone seeking to get into mastering. If you take the time to learn how to use it and what you should be looking for, you can be sure that you will get better at mixing and mastering in the process. It includes a staggering amount of functionality for a free plugin, and many home producers prefer it to popular, more expensive analyzers.

Blue Lab’s Wav3s is a plugin that allows you to visualize the audio from your project in 3D. It bears some resemblance to spectrum analysis plugins in the sense that it will show you what the sonic shape of your track looks like. Unlike SPAN and other spectrum analyzers, however, it does not include very much in-depth information. In this way, Wav3s is like a very simplified version of SPAN. In addition to simply looking cool, this plugin can be of use as a way to gauge the direction your master is taking without requiring you to have very in-depth knowledge about audio. If SPAN seems too daunting to try out just yet, Wav3s can be a nice way to ease into thinking about the big picture.

The Wav3s plugin sure is cool to look at, and it can be useful for looking at the big picture when you begin to mix or master a song. Other than that, however, this plugin does not have a ton of functionality. It is totally free, so it is worth checking out. But you may not get much use out of it once you begin to use plugins like SPAN.

Next, we have another free limiter. Unlike Loudmax, however, Limiter No6 packs in quite a bit of functionality. While you would likely only use Loudmax to increase the overall volume of your song, Limiter No6 can work as a regular compressor, as well as a few different kinds of limiters. This allows it to work in a wide range of scenarios during both mixing and mastering. If you want a simple place to start with compression and limiting, this plugin has everything you will need. 

Limiter No6 has a great array of features for a free plugin. While the simplicity of Loudmax may be attractive in some situations, it is great to have a capable compressor-limiter combo at your disposal. This one is definitely worth a download.

Finally, we have ClipShifter, another limiter of sorts. This plugin is quite versatile, as it can be used as a simple compressor, a clipping-style limiter, or a distortion tool. The controls it gives you to walk the line between clear, compressed sounds and intentionally-clipped distortion are useful and fun to play with. While the three limiters we have looked at today can all achieve the same basic result, each has a different focus and flow, so it is worth trying them all out!

ClipShifter is great fun to play with, and has the widest application of the three limiters listed here. Try playing with it as both a limiter for mastering and a distortion plugin while tracking.